The following article appeared in Bristol Times Issue 184 dated 26 February
2002; this is a weekly supplement in the daily Evening Post newspaper.

The references to Nailsea coal may be of interest to list members.

Roger




GLASS FROM THE PAST


IT may not seem much like an industrial centre these days but the large
North Somerset village of Nailsea was once the site of a big business
enterprise.

No, not the scrumpy and Western music business started by the late Adge
Cutler of Wurzel fame or even the much-lamented Coates cider factory, but a
glassworks.

For Nailsea lies at the centre of a small coalfield which has been worked
since late medieval times. It once supplied fuel for the Smyth family of
Ashton Court, who owned the pits. It was this source of coal, plus plentiful
lime, stone, sand and clay that attracted a Bristol cooper and glassmaker,
John Lucas, to the area in 1788.

He sold his beer and cider works, borrowed £4,000 (an enormous sum in those
days), leased six acres of land and constructed two 80 foot high brick
cones, one for making window glass and one for making bottles.

As there were no skilled glass workers in the area, Lucas was forced to
import whole families from other glass works all over the country. In 1792
when the social reformer and bluestocking Hannah More visited the works from
her home in Wrington, there were about 200 employees on the site living in a
whole row of newly-built cottages.

There were eventually 34 homes, all built by Lucas for his workers and
families.

Labour was mostly highly skilled, but very hot and arduous, and the whole
fusion process took anything from 18 to 30 hours non-stop. But it was highly
paid, with top employees (gaffers) earning double or triple the average
manual wages of the day. They lived well, having meat and vegetables every
day. They even ate snails, a great delicacy in those times.

Bottles were only manufactured for the first 40 years, from then on the
works made only window glass, which was melted and then cut on large tables
50 inches in diameter. It was known as Crown glass, and had a pale greenish
tinge to it and a bulls eye in the middle. It is remembered in a Nailsea
place name today.

Later, as techniques improved, sheet and then plate glass was produced.
Lucas became rich, building himself and family a mansion - Backwell Hill
House - on the site of an old hunting lodge. By early Victorian times
Nailsea was the fourth largest producer of glass in the country, exporting
to Ireland, West Indies and the Americas.

Transport was always a problem, with the glass having to be carefully packed
in straw and then taken by wagon (a dilley) and turnpike road on the
ten-mile journey to Bristol's Temple Meads railway station, or the ships in
the city docks.

This was expensive and plans were made for a canal from Morgan's Pill on the
Avon up to the site, but these eventually came to nothing, and up to 10,000
crates of glass a year continued to go to Bristol by cart.

Despite this vast output, most of the socalled Nailsea Glass - so desirable
today - was not actually made in the village at all!

What was made were so-called friggers - bits and pieces made by workers from
spare glass left over at the end of a shift. Using all their skills, such
items as barley sugar walking sticks, rolling pins, door stops, paperweights
and the like were produced and sold locally.

In later Victorian times things started to go wrong for the company. The
coal supply failed and glass production moved to Birmingham and the north.

Despite careful ownership closure came in 1873. In 1905 a brick cone was
blown up and later used as hard core for the massive Brabazon runway at
Filton.

Later other cones were felled and the site became derelict and overgrown,
with only a few buildings and workers' houses left standing.

Excavations in the 1980s revealed many lost secrets and now new excavations
for a Tesco store have revealed yet another unknown coal pit.

It is believed to have been part of the Glasshouse Pit, which produced fuel
for the town glasworks. Local historians have already listed 27 pits and
more than 100 mine shafts in the area.

Nailsea desperately needs a museum to display this heritage but until then
small collections of Nailsea glass can be seen at both Weston and Bristol
museums as well as at Clevedon Court, which is open during the summer
months.